"The Green Knight" 2021

So the hubby and I went and saw this one over the weekend on a very spontaneous whim. It was a smokey, hot Sunday afternoon and an air conditioned movie theater with some adult beverages just sounded like the right way to go. We watched several trailers for different movies and landed on "The Green Knight" because A) it looked like it was going to be visually awesome and B) the storyline sounded like an epic fantastical journey not unsimilar to "Lord of the Rings" (which we both love). Not to mention having Dev Patel as the lead actor was also a huge draw for me. He is such a good, expressive actor and I was excited to see him in this Arthurian role. Now maybe we should have done some prior research on this medieval tale in order to know what we were walking into, but I firmly believe that kind of homework shouldn't be necessary for an audience member to enjoy the product being put out. It should be able to stand on it's own by means of good writing, well developed characters and storytelling. The necessary details are well understood and while maybe some is left to subjective interpretation, it's not enough to be vital to the viewer's overall enjoyment. These critical elements are where I unfortunately found the Green Knight fell pretty dang flat.

That being said, I do want to start by saying that the film is in fact STUNNING. Seriously. The use of the different solid color palletes and various lighting choices was phenomenal. The creativity and cinematography in the settings- real or CG-, costume designs and makeups were incredibly impressive. It was the characters themselves that lacked overall depth and development. Even for how great of an actor Dev is, he could only do so much to make me care about this meek, cowardly, easily manipulated, altogether boring figure he was playing. Our introduction to him told us he was a foolish lady-driven drunk, which doesn't give you the highest opinion of him and truly, throughout his journey, it doesn't get much better. He never really develops and grows into a man worth giving a shit about. (Until mayyyybe the last five minutes.) Then the actual challenge the entire story is based around was in itself quite disappointing. This is where maybe with some historical back knowledge I would have known it was a simple "here, you cut me and then in one year, I get to cut you" type of deal, but I didn't know that. I expected at least some sort of a battle... but no. Nada. And that epic fantastical quest he was going to go on? Well, apart from a few strange people he met along the way and a cute CG fox that was probably his mother's spirit incarnate, the whole thing was slow and nearly pointless. There were some random sexual elements thrown into the mix that really felt like they had no place or benefited the story in any way.

To summarize, The Green Knight was nothing even close to LOTR-type storytelling. Maybe it was wrong of me to have expected it, but I'm going to blame the trailer on that one. If all you want is to appreciate something visually cool, then this could be right up your alley. Just didn't quite do it for me.

Overall rating: ***/*****